It turns out to be a rather unremarkable number: 1729.
Given the time that the story was published, it is possible that Borges, who was fascinated by mathematics and always encoding maths concepts into his stories, had read the anecdote about the Hardy-Ramanujan number, and hid it purposefully in the story.
Edit: anyone interested in reading more about how Borges incorporated mathematics into his stories might find this book worthwhile
http://www.amazon.com/Unimaginable-Mathematics-Borges-Librar...
"What is ultimately and urgently needed, then, is a dozenalization of the SI base units of the metric system."
Right. And that after calling 'decimal time' a limit case of absurdity by decimalist agitators ? (iirc it was just a marketing stunt by swatch).
What's this then, a limit case of absurdity by duodecimalist agitators ?
It's funny, but nobody in their right mind is going to switch to base 12 any time soon.
Hard to tell if these guys are serious: http://www.dozenal.org/index.php?u=31
I hereby propose we switch to base 11, prime numbers are so much more interesting than all these composites.
You need to read more closely. The article claimed that decimal time was an excess of the French Revolution. The French revolution was over 200 years ago, which predates anything in your memory by quite a bit. And indeed, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time verifies that during the French Revolution, when the metric system was invented, the French also tried to introduce decimal time.
This was the same time period that they tried to decimalize the quarter circle, resulting in a measurement system with 400 gradians in the circle.
And yes, it is accurate to call this a limit case of absurdity.
As for the article itself, it is impossible to say how serious it is. It is true that everyone accepts that it would be a lot of work to switch to a dozenal system. However it is absolutely true that a dozenal system would be much more convenient.
How is that, exactly? Even once we've solved the problem of convincing everybody on Earth that it's a good idea, and the other problem of going back and burning and reprinting every existing book, newspaper, film and inscription so that nobody need ever face the confusion of having to translate back and forth between old decimal and new dozenal numbers, what's the big upside again? That we no longer have to say "a third of a kilogram" and can just say "400 grams"?
As for the rest, I don't know. Decimal time may have had its advantages, but once a system is sufficiently entrenched swapping it out for a better one gets costly, and if the costs outweigh the benefits then it won't get done.
For a nice example try explaining the benefits of metric to an American or Canadian contractor, and for the Canadian one that's in a country where everything else is metric.
It sure sucks to be a canadian mechanic, you never know whether that bolt staring at you has a 3/8" head or a 10mm one, the difference (less than half a mm) is hard to eyeball.
The French tried to standardize on something when standards were still fluid enough that it might have worked. If they had not done that the SI system as we know it today would not have existed and I think that science owes a lot of its progress to standardization.
Oh, the symmetry! Four appendages of four digits each, able to count up to 2^4 -- or represent up to 2^16 with independent positioning!
While adding two fingers would require genetic-engineering or body-modification beyond current technology, the necessary tools for removing fingers exist in most garages, basements -- or even kitchens.
Shouldn't our 'digits' be digital-friendly?
Using both hands and positional notation you can easily count to a gross.
